From Montreal with Love Panel - Prose in the Park, June 4, 2016

Con Cú
May 22, 2016
3 min read

DATE: June 4, 2016

TIME: noon - 1 pm

VENUE; Parkdale Park, Ottawa, Ontario

Prose in the Park's Master of Ceremonies Sang Kim examines the influence of the City of Montreal on five amazing women writers. What is it in the city that brings out the creativity of Canadian writers? Perhaps, the meeting of North American and European culture, the synergy of the city's bilingualism? Whatever the stimuli, Montreal has become a hotbed for some of the best literary fiction in Canada. The From Montreal with Love panel features: HEATHER O'NEILL's debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, was published in 2006 to international critical acclaim and won Canada Reads. It was shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has since published the novel The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and the short story collection Daydreams of Angels, both of which were shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in consecutive years. The collection was also shortlisted for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there today with her daughter. CLAIRE HOLDEN ROTHMAN, a life-long Montrealer, is the author of two story collections and the novels My October, a finalist for the the 2014 Governor General’s Award in fiction and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Heart Specialist, also longlisted for a Giller, and published in six countries. Her translation of Canada’s first novel, L’influence d’un livre (The Influence of a Book) by Philippe-Ignace-François Aubert de Gaspé, won the John Glassco Translation Prize. SALEEMA NAWAZ was born in Ottawa and lives in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood, where her debut novel, Bone and Bread, is set. She is the author of Mother Superior, a collection of short stories and novellas, and won the prestigious Writers' Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for her story "My Three Girls." Her short fiction has been published in literary journals including the Dalhousie Review, Prism International and the New Quarterly. Bone and Bread won the Quebec Writers' Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2013. ANITA ANAND was born in Montreal. She has moved back and forth between her hometown and such places as the Bronx; Bedfordshire, England; and Richmond, B.C. In every neighbourhood where she has lived, she has been the only person her age of Indian origin. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Frostwriting and the Louisiana Review. Her short stories collection Swing in the House and Other Stories is her first book. It has won the 2015 QWF Concordia University First Book Award, 49th Shelf Most Anticipated 2015 Spring Fiction Selection and was nominated for the Blue Metropolis/Conseil des arts du Montréal Literary Diversity Prize for a First Publication. SUSAN DOHERTY HANNAFORD published her first novel, A Secret Music, in Spring 2014. In 2010, she published a commemorative history book in for a U.S. corporation. Her third book is a biography about an Ottawa woman who committed a crime for which she went to jail and before her diagnosis of schizophrenia. Susan’s passions include: education, music and de-stigmatizing mental health issues, and has done 25 years of community service in those areas. MODERATOR SANG KIM is an award-winning fiction writer, playwright, chef and restaurateur. He is the recipient of the Gloria Vanderbilt Prize for Short Fiction, which is anthologized in Exile Quarterly's CVC Anthology, as well as The Stories that are Great with Us. He is the author of A Dream called Laundry and Ballad of a Karaoke Cowboy. His upcoming third book, Woody Allen ate my Kimchi takes a candid and humorous look behind-the-scenes at some of the top restaurants and hotels in Ontario. He was the owner of the popular Yakitori Bar and Seoul Food Co. restaurants in downtown Toronto and launched the Wind-Up Bird Cafe. He runs Sushi Making For The Soul, a weekly sushi-making class, where he merges his passions for Japanese cuisine, sustainable seafood, and food literacy for children. In 2014, he conducted the world’s largest sushi making class to connect thousands of children from all seven continents via the internet to raise awareness about the need for food literacy programs in the public school system.